The Quilt Index is currently planning several future directions to pursue to make the Quilt Index better for researchers, students, teachers, and quiltmakers. I’ll be blogging about these new directions over the next few weeks, beginning today with education. And if you have comments or questions about any of the QI’s future directions, please don’t hesitate to leave a comment on this blog. We want to hear from you!

Educational Capacity:
Enriching the research and educational capacity of the Quilt Index as well as addressing the desire of other institutions to make their data accessible for users is an important goal for the Index in the future. Our evaluation and survey results suggest that there are a number of innovative educational activities already in use by teachers in middle school through university classrooms.

We have heard from teachers using the Index to teach all kinds of content, from genre and authorship in language arts classes to the Civil War and America’s connection to Africa in the social studies classroom. Yet there is an important opportunity for growth and particularly for framing materials particularly for specific age groups, subject areas (using quilts to teach mathematics concepts, for example), and topics. QI staff members have begun seeking support through grants for the development of K-12 curricula based on both the data held in the Index and the tools used to search, mine, and present that data.

Teachers: We crave comments! What kinds of educational materials would you like to see the Quilt Index to develop in the future?